THE woman co-accused of the murder of the man she was planning to marry cared nothing for him, a court heard.
Christine Margaret Holleran, 50, is accused of being party to the murder of Chester man Andrew Mackenzie Nall, 53, at his flat in Eversley Park, off Liverpool Road, on August 30 last year.
Holleran, who has been on trial with her co-accused, Gary Anthony George, 42, at Chester Crown Court for more than a fortnight, was described to jurors as ‘wicked’ by Ian Unsworth, QC, prosecuting, after it was alleged that she took money out of her dead partner’s wallet and went to buy alcohol with his murderer.
Holleran accepts being present in the flat at the time of the attack but denies murder, while her co-accused George yesterday admitted the ‘sadistic and torturous’ murder of Mr Nall, having previously denied the charge and admitting killing him on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
In his final submissions to jurors, Mr Unsworth said: “Just before breakfast on Friday, August 31, two people walked out of the door of flat four, Eversley Park. They could have been any couple. They were far from that.
“What exactly happened behind that door is a secret that only those people know about.
“It was a secret that Christine Holleran knew when she was hugging murderer Gary George the day after. It was a secret that she knew when she was buying alcohol with his money the next morning.
“It was a secret that she knew when she told police officers who came to tell her that Mr Nall was dead that he was ‘just sleeping and to give him a tickle’. A wicked thing to say.”
Mr Unsworth suggested that Holleran had ‘been party’ to the murder and had ‘no love’ for Mr Nall, despite claiming that their romance was like something “from the pages of a Mills and Boon novel”.
“One witness described seeing Miss Holleran beating up Andrew Nall in the days leading up to his death,” said Mr Unsworth.”